“I’m Sorry, But It’s against My Religion”

All this stuff about “religious freedom” laws is quite brilliant when you think about it. You say you don’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding? You don’t want to sell birth control to a woman? You don’t want to rent to Jews? No problem! All you have to do is say, “I’m sorry, but it’s against my religion,” and voilà, you’re off the hook!

Yessir, if you want to declare your sovereign self exempt from any and all anti-discrimination laws, all you have to do is say, “I’m sorry, but it’s against my religion.” Hell. you probably don’t even have to say, “I’m sorry, but . . . .”

When these laws become the law of the land throughout the land, how will it work? Will the religious freedom exemption be automatic and absolute, or will those who claim it have to provide a sound theological rationale?

Suppose a Muslim person walks into a Domino’s and orders a pizza. And suppose the guy behind the counter says his deeply held religious convictions forbid him from making pizza for Muslims. And suppose the Muslim person asks him to declare the basis for such a conclusion. Will the guy behind the counter be required to respond, or will he just be able to say screw you?

But suppose the guy behind the counter does unearth a nugget of scripture that affirms his stance. And suppose the Muslim person challenges the interpretation, or puts forth a contradictory nugget from the same scripture declaring that, as God’s children, we’re all obligated to make pizza for each other. Who wins? Will there be divinity police, with doctorates in theology, walking the beat? Go out and flag one down and bring them in to settle the dispute?

Because I ride around in a wheelchair, I’ve been refused service a lot. There once was a day, not long ago, when I couldn’t access any public transit buses. And once I ordered a beer in a bar and the bartender wouldn’t give me one. “What if something happened to you?” she said. She would only serve me a soft drink, she said, or something non-alcoholic.

This was before there was an Americans With Disabilities Act, which prohibits public and private entities from discriminating against qualified disabled individuals. According to the Disabilities Act, I would indeed have been qualified to receive that beer because I was 1) over 21 and 2) sober. Those are the only qualifications you need.

So if that bartender denied me service today, I could sue her good! But maybe someday soon the Americans With Disabilities Act won’t matter, and if she doesn’t want to serve me, she’ll just have to say, “I’m sorry, but giving beer to a guy in a wheelchair is against my religion.”

That’ll be a new one on me. I’ve been denied access to a lot of things (like beer) and I’ve heard a million excuses to justify it, but no one has ever blamed it on God. But I’m sure anyone who’s determined enough to find a biblical basis for turning me away will find one. That’s how the Bible works.

Mike Ervin is a writer and disability rights activist living in Chicago. He blogs at Smart Ass Cripple, “expressing pain through sarcasm since 2010.”

Comments (1)

You Can't Have It Both Ways

A number of people and organizations have been cut off lately by corporate quasi-public-utilities - ISPs, domain servers, etc. - because "fascism". Sometimes the allegation even seems obviously true. Then again, those service providers are usually technical in nature, utterly lacking the resources to accurately investigate the politics of every potential customer. But somehow the arbitrary denial of service is celebrated as wonderful.

Then we have the wedding cakes and the like. With a vast array of providers, one can usually find another one by walking a few steps, or at most driving a minute or three. And yet we are instructed that even a sole proprietor - not a giant public utility - is to be forced to provide commercial art expressing a view contrary to his or her religion or other deeply held view - wrongly held, of course, according to the all-knowing elite. And besides, it's merely commercial art, unworthy of protection, rather than the fine art said elite might well hold worthy. So the arbitrary denial of service is condemned as intolerable.

The trouble is that political winds are fickle. If you don't want the Trumps of the world forcing commercial artists to provide "fascist" art, then it's probably unwise to force provision of whatever kind. (Likewise, if you don't want them fishing without cause through leftists' emails and personal details - as per the latest news reports - then really, you can't allow such fishing through rightists' emails and personal details either.)

Law based on anything as fickle as political leanings cannot be counted on for anything. It will come back and bite you the next time another Trump ascends to office. However musty the Constitution might be according to some, it at least gets that much correct, so it doesn't condition the Bill of Rights on content. The writers probably understood that You Can't Have It Both Ways.

So this isn't easy stuff. It might just be wiser - especially in a diverse society - sometimes to live and let live rather than force lockstep conformity. That is, let an occasional decorated-cake buyer take a few steps or drive a minute or two to reach an alternate supplier, rather than make make every minor interaction a matter for Federal police intervention. It's just a small private transaction, and the interventionism will feel good for not one moment longer than politicians you agree with happen to be in office.